I really like Apple laptops. Great quality, performant hardware, and NOT expensive. However I have never bought a single Apple laptop. And you know why ? Because they don't make ultraportable laptops, and, oh boy, I wish they would !
The lighter Apple laptop is the MacBook at 5.2 pounds (2.36 kg). For comparison purpose my current ultraportable, a Panasonic R3 stands at 2.2 pounds (990 g !). Wouldn't that be cool a 2.2 pounds Apple laptop ?
For your information,/. readers, AMD predicted a few months ago (google "amd 4p server share") that they target 50% of the 4-way server market share at some point in 2006. So if Dell had decided to stick with Intel it would have meant that they would have restricted themselves to less than 50% of this market. Dell have really been stupid to wait so long to sell AMD servers, they have already lost a lot of money because of this (current headline on marketwatch.com in bold font: "Dell profit falls 18%").
Yes the "server install" option is, stricly speaking, not an advantage since you have this option with Debian too. I just wanted to point out this not so well-known feature...
Regarding the fixed release schedule, yes Dapper is late by 2 months, but this is in no way comparable to the past of Debian (2 years between potato and woody ! 3 years between woody and sarge !), which you seem to completely ignore. If what you say is true, then good for Debian if they start trying to do more frequent releases, starting from now (so it has yet to be proven if they succeed).
Regarding the 5-year support for Dapper, yes this is basically what Ubuntu guarantees: that the distro packages and kernel will be supported for 5 years.
Homogeneity: of course it all depends on what OS are running on your desktops and servers. For example you can decide to go for all Debian or all Ubuntu. For those that run Ubuntu on their desktops, then running Ubuntu on their servers is the way to achieve homogeneity.
Developers: Yes I know there are bright people on the Debian side too. However in my experience, I have been more impressed by the Ubuntu ones than by the Debian ones. You are welcome to share with us your opposite experience instead of just saying "The same, of course, applies also to Debian developers".
I use Ubuntu as well as Debian, both on desktops and servers. Here is a couple of advantages Ubuntu has over Debian on servers:
Server install. I have to point it out because many people don't know it but installing Ubuntu doesn't necessarily mean installing a full-fledged desktop OS. You can actually select the "server" option during installation and it will only install server-related packages with no X11/X.org packages whatsoever.
Fixed release schedule. Ubuntu releases a new version of its install CDs every 6 months while Debian is more irregular and does it less often. It makes it easier for example when you need to install Ubuntu on recent hardware, the kernel is generally more up-to-date and Debian may not detect all of your hardware. Of course it is always possible to find workarounds for Debian (loading an optional kernel module, netbooting a more recent kernel, etc), but it involves more work.
Packages freshness. Ubuntu tends to have more recent packages than Debian. For example I recently had to install 2 servers, one Ubuntu and one Debian, that had to boot off a software md RAID setup. It worked off-the-shelf with Ubuntu because it uses a more recent initrd package (mkinitramfs, IIRC) while the latest AMD64 Debian release uses an older initrd package (initrd-tools) that was unable to correctly detect and assemble the RAID arrays when booting up, I had to manually fix that to make it work.
Homogeneity. When you already run Ubuntu on your desktop machines, running the same OS on your servers (without the desktop packages of course) simplifies everything: your local package mirroring server only has to mirror packages for 1 OS, maintaining and supporting only 1 OS requires less work than 2 OSes, etc.
Developers. It seems Ubuntu developers are extremely active and, simply said, bright people. I have already fixed a couple of bugs in various Ubuntu scripts/packages over the past year or so and Ubuntu developers have always been very quick to respond and apply the patches. I also tend to keep an eye on what they are doing and it is obvious that Ubuntu developers make a lot of efforts to correctly engineer every little detail in their distribution.
As a Unix guru/developer I also regularly use a couple of other Linux and BSD distros (FreeBSD, Gentoo, OpenBSD, etc) because I like to experiment a lot and like to live on the bleeding edge of technology, but all in all I have realized that Ubuntu plainly rocks and there is a lot of reasons why it is becomming so popular.
I think every IT engineer easily understands the advantages of Ubuntu.
And somehow it totally makes sense that Sun, "a company built for engineers, by engineers" [1],
is interested in Ubuntu:-)
I am a technological perfectionist and Mark Shuttleworth (the man behind Ubuntu) seems to
have created a distro the way I would have done it. It is well engineered and It Just Works (TM).
Yes ! As most security vulnerabilities in computer programs, you need to use them in order to be vulnerable. Somehow when you stop using them you are not affected anymore.
I understand your viewpoint. However you seem to treat Chinese people and their government as
the same group of people, deserving to be punished by banning them access to your website.
But the fact is that most Chinese people are already very much opposed to their government
and this is becoming more and more obvious. I read somewhere that the number of protests
per year against their government is constantly increasing: about 50,000 in 2003, 75,000 in 2004 and
85,000 in 2005 !
So, Chinese people, as opposed to their government, want the benefits of a free world.
It's already hard for them to get around the Great Chinese Firewall, but yet you contribute
to that sad state of affairs by adding another firewall.
Your are effectively helping the Chinese government by censoring information !
You think you are helping Chinese people realize the inconveniences of censorship ?
The fact is that they are already aware of it, are already sick of it,
and are already protesting against it.
Please reconsider your decision, don't ban China from your website.
Please, don't do that. Banning a whole country is against the very principles of Internet. Do you realize that, in the first place, you created your public website to share information with other people, but then decide to prevent 1.3+ billion people, or 1 out of 5 people on the planet, from accessing it ? And don't say they have "no need to access it". Internet is all about sharing information to anybody, whatever the source IP address you see in the network packets.
And what about people using web proxies located in China ?
What about your friends on a 2-week trip to China ?
What about people using anonymizers services based in China ?
What about people browsing over Tor networks ?
What about search engine bots crawling from China ?
What about all of the other cases you are not thinking about ?
Sure this is your personal website so you can do what you want, but please keep in mind that (1) banning a whole country actually prevents even some "authorized" people from accessing your site, and (2) hackers will be the first ones to use open proxies not located in China to try to bypass your country firewalling rules.
I didn't want to post anonymously, my post was a joke.
It's surprising how hard it is to get modded funny on/., just check my history, about 50% of my supposedly funny posts are modded down because nobody get my humor:)
It all depends on how much money you guys could save by building your servers in-house. The fact that IT is your company goal or not is irrelevant. If it allows you to gain a significant advantage over your competitors, then you should consider building your servers in-house.
A company should strive to survive by any reasonable mean, it should
not stick to dumb rules like "doing X could save us $100k/year but we
won't do it because X is not our goal". If tomorrow one of your
competitors decide to do X and place your company in serious troubles
because of this, then I don't think you will say "hey they weren't supposed
to do X, it was not their company goal":-)
Then, again, maybe building your servers in-house will not allow
you to save a huge amount of money, in this case you are fine by continuing
to buy them from IBM/HP/etc.
<<
Building servers would require enough people to build said servers.
>>
Then hire enough people to do it. Google has proven to us that even if you need to produce so many servers that it would make you the 3rd or 4th largest server maker in the world, then building them yourself is STILL perfectly possible.
Wow, just wow ! Did you guys see that in the article:
<<
According to some industry experts, Google is now assembling so many of its own servers that it may be the third or fourth-largest server maker in the world.
>>
I think that a lot of companies could reduce their expenses by
doing the same thing than Google: instead of buying expensive
hardware, warranties and support from IBM/HP/Dell/Sun, they could
hire people to design, build and maintain their own IT infrastructure.
I think it makes sense for any shop with 1000+ machines. Think about
it again:
A 24x7 support contract from BigITCompany is good, but a team of your
own technicians already working for you on-site is even better.
BigITCompany doesn't sell AMD server ? Your own team of technicians
can build any server customized to your own needs and won't try
to sell you unnecessary parts/services, since it is in their interest to save
you money (since they work for the same company than you:P).
Tired of waiting for hours on the phone with a BigITCompany support
guy to replace a stupid broken fan on a desktop machine ?
Your own team of support technicians will never make you wait.
...
To any non-believer: Google does exactly this, and it works very well for them.
So why not starting to do it at your company ?
Malware that will infect the tool/driver used to configure this card and disable the protection.
Malware that will employ evasion techniques to prevent the card from detecting them (and as with traditional IDS evasion methods, they will be very effective and bad guys will implement them relatively easily).
The card will be overpriced, and will not meet the commercial success its original developers hoped.
Do you realize that your argument goes against you ? Since its creation in 1960, the Giga prefix has always meant 10^9. But then, with the development of computing, a "bunch of guys" decided it to use to mean 2^30. So by your very argument, we should keep its original definition of Giga = 10^9. Oh wait I think I agree with you:-)
<<
Because "GiB" is stupid. GB means 2^30 bytes, and that's just the way it is.
>>
No. 2^30 is just a convention used in most computing fields. The standard definition is and will always be 10^9, since Giga is a SI prefix. Nobody is wrong by using 2^30 or 10^9. There is just one conventional and one standard usage. The world has to live with this double definition.
While your post remind people that different definitions of GB are used, you are actually adding to the existing confusion. Because what you call a "real GB" is not real at all. You should rather call it "conventional GB", as in "conventional Giga prefix used in computing, ie 2**30". The real Giga is the Giga prefix as defined by SI, ie 10**9. Disk manufacturers are just using the standard Giga SI prefix instead of the "conventional Giga prefix". Other people are doing it in the computing industry. Bandwidth and throughput are also typically referred to using standard SI prefixes (e.g. an MP3 file at 128 Kbit/s is 128000 bit/s NOT 128*1024 bit/s).
Slashdot Mirror
I really like Apple laptops. Great quality, performant hardware, and NOT expensive. However I have never bought a single Apple laptop. And you know why ? Because they don't make ultraportable laptops, and, oh boy, I wish they would ! The lighter Apple laptop is the MacBook at 5.2 pounds (2.36 kg). For comparison purpose my current ultraportable, a Panasonic R3 stands at 2.2 pounds (990 g !). Wouldn't that be cool a 2.2 pounds Apple laptop ?
If you had googled "amd 4p server share" as I indicated in my post, you would have found that AMD already has 40% of that market share !
I am not even kidding. AMD share price has jumped +15% today. Damn I KNEW this Dell deal had to happen someday, I should have invested :-(
For your information, /. readers, AMD predicted a few months ago (google "amd 4p server share") that they target 50% of the 4-way server market share at some point in 2006. So if Dell had decided to stick with Intel it would have meant that they would have restricted themselves to less than 50% of this market. Dell have really been stupid to wait so long to sell AMD servers, they have already lost a lot of money because of this (current headline on marketwatch.com in bold font: "Dell profit falls 18%").
Somewhere in Wall Street: "BUY AMD ! BUY AMD !"
Yes the "server install" option is, stricly speaking, not an advantage since you have this option with Debian too. I just wanted to point out this not so well-known feature...
Regarding the fixed release schedule, yes Dapper is late by 2 months, but this is in no way comparable to the past of Debian (2 years between potato and woody ! 3 years between woody and sarge !), which you seem to completely ignore. If what you say is true, then good for Debian if they start trying to do more frequent releases, starting from now (so it has yet to be proven if they succeed).
Regarding the 5-year support for Dapper, yes this is basically what Ubuntu guarantees: that the distro packages and kernel will be supported for 5 years.
Homogeneity: of course it all depends on what OS are running on your desktops and servers. For example you can decide to go for all Debian or all Ubuntu. For those that run Ubuntu on their desktops, then running Ubuntu on their servers is the way to achieve homogeneity.
Developers: Yes I know there are bright people on the Debian side too. However in my experience, I have been more impressed by the Ubuntu ones than by the Debian ones. You are welcome to share with us your opposite experience instead of just saying "The same, of course, applies also to Debian developers".
I use Ubuntu as well as Debian, both on desktops and servers. Here is a couple of advantages Ubuntu has over Debian on servers:
As a Unix guru/developer I also regularly use a couple of other Linux and BSD distros (FreeBSD, Gentoo, OpenBSD, etc) because I like to experiment a lot and like to live on the bleeding edge of technology, but all in all I have realized that Ubuntu plainly rocks and there is a lot of reasons why it is becomming so popular. I think every IT engineer easily understands the advantages of Ubuntu. And somehow it totally makes sense that Sun, "a company built for engineers, by engineers" [1], is interested in Ubuntu :-)
I am a technological perfectionist and Mark Shuttleworth (the man behind Ubuntu) seems to
have created a distro the way I would have done it. It is well engineered and It Just Works (TM).
[1] http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan
Yes ! As most security vulnerabilities in computer programs, you need to use them in order to be vulnerable. Somehow when you stop using them you are not affected anymore.
I understand your viewpoint. However you seem to treat Chinese people and their government as the same group of people, deserving to be punished by banning them access to your website. But the fact is that most Chinese people are already very much opposed to their government and this is becoming more and more obvious. I read somewhere that the number of protests per year against their government is constantly increasing: about 50,000 in 2003, 75,000 in 2004 and 85,000 in 2005 !
So, Chinese people, as opposed to their government, want the benefits of a free world. It's already hard for them to get around the Great Chinese Firewall, but yet you contribute to that sad state of affairs by adding another firewall. Your are effectively helping the Chinese government by censoring information ! You think you are helping Chinese people realize the inconveniences of censorship ? The fact is that they are already aware of it, are already sick of it, and are already protesting against it.
Please reconsider your decision, don't ban China from your website.
Please, don't do that. Banning a whole country is against the very principles of Internet. Do you realize that, in the first place, you created your public website to share information with other people, but then decide to prevent 1.3+ billion people, or 1 out of 5 people on the planet, from accessing it ? And don't say they have "no need to access it". Internet is all about sharing information to anybody, whatever the source IP address you see in the network packets.
And what about people using web proxies located in China ?
What about your friends on a 2-week trip to China ?
What about people using anonymizers services based in China ?
What about people browsing over Tor networks ?
What about search engine bots crawling from China ?
What about all of the other cases you are not thinking about ?
Sure this is your personal website so you can do what you want, but please keep in mind that (1) banning a whole country actually prevents even some "authorized" people from accessing your site, and (2) hackers will be the first ones to use open proxies not located in China to try to bypass your country firewalling rules.
I didn't want to post anonymously, my post was a joke. It's surprising how hard it is to get modded funny on /., just check my history, about 50% of my supposedly funny posts are modded down because nobody get my humor :)
So now we can't even send a small batch of 5 million emails without risking jail ? Pffffff. - Anonymous spammer
Once trademarked we will all have to use :-)(TM) Isn't that funny ? :-)(TM)
Thanks for that link, I had never heard of "Titanic" before !
Andrew should name such an unsinkable kernel TiTanenbaum.
I heard those features are planned to be incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. Does that answer your question ?
Article: The 50 Year History of Play-Doh
"[The team] believes the effect may be useful in driving coolants through overheating Pentium 4 processors." :-)
There, I fixed it for you
It all depends on how much money you guys could save by building your servers in-house. The fact that IT is your company goal or not is irrelevant. If it allows you to gain a significant advantage over your competitors, then you should consider building your servers in-house. A company should strive to survive by any reasonable mean, it should not stick to dumb rules like "doing X could save us $100k/year but we won't do it because X is not our goal". If tomorrow one of your competitors decide to do X and place your company in serious troubles because of this, then I don't think you will say "hey they weren't supposed to do X, it was not their company goal" :-)
Then, again, maybe building your servers in-house will not allow you to save a huge amount of money, in this case you are fine by continuing to buy them from IBM/HP/etc.
Then hire enough people to do it. Google has proven to us that even if you need to produce so many servers that it would make you the 3rd or 4th largest server maker in the world, then building them yourself is STILL perfectly possible.
Wow, just wow ! Did you guys see that in the article:
<<According to some industry experts, Google is now assembling so many of its own servers that it may be the third or fourth-largest server maker in the world.
>>
I think that a lot of companies could reduce their expenses by doing the same thing than Google: instead of buying expensive hardware, warranties and support from IBM/HP/Dell/Sun, they could hire people to design, build and maintain their own IT infrastructure. I think it makes sense for any shop with 1000+ machines. Think about it again:
To any non-believer: Google does exactly this, and it works very well for them. So why not starting to do it at your company ?
I predict:
Do you realize that your argument goes against you ? Since its creation in 1960, the Giga prefix has always meant 10^9. But then, with the development of computing, a "bunch of guys" decided it to use to mean 2^30. So by your very argument, we should keep its original definition of Giga = 10^9. Oh wait I think I agree with you :-)
No. 2^30 is just a convention used in most computing fields. The standard definition is and will always be 10^9, since Giga is a SI prefix. Nobody is wrong by using 2^30 or 10^9. There is just one conventional and one standard usage. The world has to live with this double definition.
While your post remind people that different definitions of GB are used, you are actually adding to the existing confusion. Because what you call a "real GB" is not real at all. You should rather call it "conventional GB", as in "conventional Giga prefix used in computing, ie 2**30". The real Giga is the Giga prefix as defined by SI, ie 10**9. Disk manufacturers are just using the standard Giga SI prefix instead of the "conventional Giga prefix". Other people are doing it in the computing industry. Bandwidth and throughput are also typically referred to using standard SI prefixes (e.g. an MP3 file at 128 Kbit/s is 128000 bit/s NOT 128*1024 bit/s).